1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a personal video recorder system, and more particularly, to a method of hierarchical image indexing which extracts representative images of a TV program and generates a hierarchical index image guide, and an apparatus therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a digital broadcasting receiving system receives a digital broadcast, and stores and reproduces audio/video data.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a digital broadcast receiving and/or reproducing system. The digital broadcasting receiving and/or reproducing system of FIG. 1 has a Transport Stream (TS) demultiplexer (demux) unit 120 which demultiplexes an Audio/Video elementary stream, a storage unit 160 which stores transport packets of a TV program, a digital interface unit 150 which transmits a transport packet to the storage unit 160 or receives a transport packet from the storage unit 160, an audio decoder 140 which decodes an audio stream output from the TS demux unit 120, a video decoder 150 which decodes a video stream output from the TS demux unit 120, and a control unit 110 which controls each unit.
Referring to FIG. 1, in the TS demux unit 120 a received transport stream packet is demultiplexed into a partial transport stream of a TV program to be stored. The partial transport stream packet is sent through the digital interface unit 150 and stored with time information in the storage unit 160. When the TV program is reproduced, the partial transport stream packet stored in the storage unit 160 is input to the TS demux unit 120 through the digital interface unit 150. The partial transport stream packet is output as an audio elementary stream and a video elementary stream from the TS demux unit 120. The audio and video elementary streams are decoded in the audio decoder 130 and the video decoder 140, respectively.
However, when the TV program is reproduced, the prior art digital broadcasting receiving and/or reproducing system of FIG. 1 has no information indicating a scene which a TV viewer wants to watch, or a location of the scene. Therefore, the system performs only simple reproduction or a trick play (for example, Fast Forward (FF) or rewind).
Accordingly, with the prior art digital broadcasting receiving system, TV viewers must identify each scene, which they want to watch, by using a FF function or a rewind function.